This film title is almost, though not quite, false advertising. There's certainly a gale, and a wrecked ship, but the one didn't cause the other. This early film records a brutal storm with a close view of waves crashing over a wreck - an empty, broken ship that had beached some time before. Still, the wreck gives a sense of scale to the ferocity of the weather, and is a stark reminder of the damage that a gale can do.